10 Events Gen X People Remember Exactly Where They Were (And Who They Were With) When They Happened
Every generation has their touchstones, and these 10 just might be the core memories of Gen X.
Monkey Business Images | Shutterstock The Silent Generation had the 1929 stock market crash and Pearl Harbor. For boomers, it was the Kennedy assassination and the moon landing. These are the kind of moments that are so huge, monumental, and historic that you remember exactly where you were, how you felt, and maybe even what you were wearing.
Generation X, the cohort born roughly between 1965 and 1980, has lived through so much monumental change that it's hard to narrow down what their similar core memories might be. But one TikToker thinks he has, and his list of ten generational touchstones will surely resonate with any X'ers — and a lot of their millennial siblings, too.
Here are 10 events that Gen X'ers remember exactly where they were when they happened:
Joe Boyd, a "Gen X storyteller and coach" who is also a former actor and film producer, put together a list of historical events that were unforgettable.
It's pretty hard to be a creative person and NOT take fine-tuned notice of current events and how they affect people. So it's perhaps no surprise that when he attempted to narrow down these ten memorable events, many of his fellow Gen X'ers on TikTok felt like he nailed it.
For me personally, born right at the tail end of Gen X in a cohort often referred to as Xennial (baby Gen X/elder millennial), I couldn't agree more. I remember most of these things as if they happened five minutes ago, and if you're of a similar age, you likely will, too.
1. 9/11
This is probably the most obvious one — and certainly not unique to Gen X. Millennials were just as strongly impacted by 9/11, especially since most of them were just little kids when it happened.
But 9/11 hit differently for Gen X. While they were adults when it happened, in 2001 most X'ers were only in their 20s, still in the opening stages of launching their adult lives after coming of age in a world where an attack like 9/11 seemed impossible.
For that world you'd been building your life in to suddenly change overnight — and to watch it happen in real-time knowing nothing would ever be the same again — is a uniquely destabilizing experience that other generations can't quite grasp.
2. The explosion of The Challenger
The Challenger space shuttle disaster of 1986 is unforgettable for lots of reasons — it was one of the first space flights to include regular citizens who weren't astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space. That made it feel more accessible to average Americans than previous space missions, so when it ended in disaster, it was felt intensely.
For me, it was memorable for a different reason — as a 7-year-old at the time, it was the first time I'd ever seen adults burst into tears. I thought only kids did that, and witnessing that raw emotion from people I thought were indestructible has never left me.
3. Y2K
This is just as much a millennial touchstone as a Gen X one, but Boyd is right — the stakes were so high on December 31, 1999, after months of hearing about how a date-related computer glitch had the potential to shut down the entire world at midnight. It's hard not to remember exactly where you were when the apocalypse was looming.
The hilarity that ensued when, by 12:01 am on January 1, 2000, literally… nothing had gone wrong probably only cemented the memory for everyone old enough to have experienced it.
4. The OJ Simpson Bronco chase
This probably wouldn't carry much resonance today, as celebrity meltdowns became a whole media industry in the 2000s, and famous people acting out on social media is now an everyday occurrence.
But in 1994, to see a huge international celebrity having a live, televised breakdown on an LA freeway was quite a sight to behold — on top of the fact that, amid the mysterious circumstances of Simpson's ex Nicole Brown's grisly murder, it felt incredibly incriminating on Simpson's part.
5. The OJ verdict
Speaking of incriminating, though Simpson's trial was very divisive at the time, after eight full months of televised court proceedings, much of which hinged on the fact that Simpson's blood was splattered all around the crime scene, it was downright shocking when he was acquitted.
It's no wonder that "if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit" is still a popular joke among Gen X'ers to this day. This is the kind of twist ending you never forget.
6. The death of Princess Diana
Even if you're not the type of person who cares much about the British royals, Princess Diana was a different story.
Perhaps because of her extensive charity work pertaining to the AIDS epidemic — a formative experience for Gen X'ers, many of whom came of age in the suddenly life-threatening dating scene the Reagan Administration's inaction on the disease created — Diana was the one royal that nearly everyone cared about at the time.
And especially after all the drama of her marriage to King Charles, for her light to be snuffed out so unceremoniously out of nowhere was the kind of shock that stays with you.
7. The Seinfeld season finale
"It's a weird one," Boyd admitted, but he's probably right.
It's important to point out for the younger crowd that before the internet, we existed in a monoculture — there were only a few TV channels and radio stations, so unless you really sought out alternative entertainment, everyone pretty much watched and listened to the same stuff.
And "Seinfeld" upended the format of the mainstay of everyone's nightly entertainment at the time, the sitcom. There had never been a "show about nothing," full of characters who were basically bad people, and for which "no learning, no hugging" was literally creator Larry David's guiding principle.
When it came to a close, it felt like the end of a new era that had only just begun.
8. When Trump beat Clinton in 2016
Does this one really need any explanation? Though the majority felt a Trump victory was impossible, many of us (myself included) saw it coming a mile away — but that didn't make it any less shocking when it actually became reality.
Like 9/11 before it, it felt like a true before-and-after moment for the country and maybe even the world. And just as Boyd said in his video, I personally can feel, hear, and smell the moment we knew it was all over that night in November as if it were happening again right now. (And I'd be lying if I said the present doesn't feel eerily similar to 2016.)
9. The beginning of Desert Storm
Given the unending wartime violence that has been a constant since 9/11, it may be hard for younger people to fathom a time when America being at war felt like an impossibility.
But that is the environment in which Desert Storm happened, not even a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event (which frankly should have made Boyd's list) that crystallized a previously impossible optimism for lasting peace, at least in the West.
To have war erupt again so soon — and for such dubious reasons — felt like whiplash (and made George W. Bush's second Iraq War in 2002 feel farcically evil and impossible to sell to most Gen X'ers and Millennials).
10. The Reagan assassination attempt
Personally, I was just a toddler when this happened, but for core Gen X'ers, whose parents and grandparents lived through the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, this surely felt monumental.
That would-be assassin John Hinckley did it in an attempt to impress actor Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed, surely gave it a disorienting bizarreness that X'ers found difficult to shake.
These 10 events are inarguable, but Boyd's comments quickly filled up with X'ers who had even more items for his list, from Baby Jessica falling down the well to the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, the Oklahoma City bombing, the L.A. riots of 1992 and the death of Kurt Cobain. All the more evidence of the extraordinary times through which Gen X has lived.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.